c; while from the deserted rooms below
no sound of mallet and chisel nor any other sound of life reached her
ear.

In the mean while, as we have said, summer had come. Rossel had invited
old Schoepf and his granddaughter to his villa on the lake. But as the
old man did not think it would be just the thing for him to go and live
with the girl under a bachelor's roof, and as she herself would not
listen to the proposal for a moment, our "Fat Rossel" also remained in
town, an arrangement, by-the-way, that was far more agreeable to him.
Kohle alone took up his quarters with old Katie, in order to paint his
allegory of Venus on the wall. The foster-mother had returned from
Florence with a whole trunkful of articles of art and ornament for
Angelica, and a thousand greetings from the happy pair. She was never
tired of telling about the beautiful life the two were leading: how
Herr Jansen had begun some wonderful new works; how the Frenchmen and
Englishmen had gone wild over them; and how happy little Frances was
with her beautiful mamma. She had also seen the baron and Irene, but
nothing had as yet been heard of the young baron.

These accounts had greatly excited the good soul of our friend. Long
after the cheerful little woman had gone, Angelica sat at the table on
which she had spread out Julie's presents, the photographs taken from
the pictures of the Tribuna, the mosaic brooch and the beautiful silks,
and sadly reflected whether she would not have done better if she had
crossed the Alps when she was asked, instead of staying here at home
and torturing her soul with the pangs of a hopeless love.

Just then she heard Rosenbusch rush whistling upstairs with unusual
haste. Immediately after he entered her studio. His face had the same
thoughtless, dare-devil expression that it used to have in his most
flourishing days, when he still wore his violet-velvet coat.

"What news do you bring, Rosenbusch?" asked the painter, who was as
little pleased with his jollity as she had been before with his
dejection. "You look as if you had just made a great find, a genuine
Wouverman at some salt-dealer's, or the red cloth of which Countess
Terzky dreamed in Eger. Well?"

"My honored friend," he remonstrated, "you wrong me, as usual. What I
bring is not antiquities, but two very important items of news, a
serious and a comic one. Which do you wish to hear first?"

"First the serious one. You alarm me, Rosenbusch. Why, you really look